Hand-held cellular phones have caused significant interference with navigation systems in commercial aircraft. While the power level on a cellular phone may be adjusted down to as low as six milliwatts for perfect connections, the power output can rise to as much as 2 watts. A hazard nearly as important in preventing that of interference with aircraft navigation is the potential paralysis of the ground-base cellular system. The ground-base cellular system is designed for people driving or moving slowly on the ground and assumes that each user is only able to communicate with a handful of antennas. These antenna locations then agree which one has the strongest signal from the user and then carry the communication. An individual in an aircraft flying over a city could literally tie up one channel each in over a hundred antennas and this could cause a great deal of inefficiency and near paralysis in the ground cellular system. For this reason, and for the concern about aircraft navigation, it is a violation of federal law to use a cell phone in an aircraft.
Nevertheless, our society has grown so accustomed to the use of the cellular phones that aircraft passengers frequently use them illegally in flight. The rules on the ground have been relaxed to the point now that most airlines will allow the use of the cellular phone until the aircraft doors are actually closed. Many passengers assume that this indicates that the rules are just another bit of bureaucracy and are beginning to ignore them in flight with potentially disastrous consequences. Importantly, many passengers simply forget to turn their phones off when they board the plane.
A system is needed for detecting the use of a cellular phone during any time in a flight and immediately giving a location so the crew can take measures to have the cellular phone turned off.
The art referred to and/or described above is not intended to constitute an admission that any patent, publication or other information referred to herein is “prior art” with respect to this invention. In addition, this section should not be construed to mean that a search has been made or that no other pertinent information as defined in 37 C.F.R. §1.56(a) exists.
All U.S. patents and applications and all other published documents mentioned anywhere in this application are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Without limiting the scope of the invention, a brief summary of some of the claimed embodiments of the invention is set forth below. Additional details of the summarized embodiments of the invention or additional embodiments of the invention may be found in the Detailed Description of the Invention below.
A brief abstract of the technical disclosure in the specification is provided for the purposes of complying with 37 C.F.R. §1.72.